Charlie Hebdo waves the white flag

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, a period clotted with jingoistic language, one phrase hardened into cliche faster than any other: if we don’t go shopping, forge ahead with baseball’s World Series, maintain an uninterrupted broadcast schedule for the Late Show With David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, or if we alter our lives in any significant way, then the terrorists have won.

That cliched bit of ‘keep calm and carry on’ sanctimony quickly devolved into a cliched joke, with the terrorists mocked endlessly alongside platitudes about Al Qaeda hating us for our freedom and admonitions that we only stuff our mouths full of “freedom fries.”

But let us briefly reanimate that expression and acknowledge that in one important battle — the battle over free speech — the terrorists have indeed won. And let’s also acknowledge that it was psychopathic violence, not a sense of propriety and consideration for those down and out in Paris and Clichy-sous-Bois, that helped achieve this victory.

Last week, in an interview with German newsweekly Stern, Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau waved a white flag, stained with the blood of 12 murdered colleagues and comrades, when announcing that he would no longer draw cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. It was clear that Charlie Hebdo — of which Riss owns 40 percent — was also done with Muhammad mockery. This comes just a few months after cartoonist Renald “Luz” Luzier said that drawing Muhammad “no longer interested” him. He quit Charlie Hebdo not long after. The editor of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was more forthcoming about why he too was done with the prophet. As the newspaper that kicked off the “Muhammad cartoon crisis” in 2005, Jyllands-Posten would not be republishing anything from Charlie Hebdo, he stated bluntly, because the staff feared a repeat of the the massacre in Paris.

This is an entirely understandable surrender to violence, though disappointingly one that is cloaked in euphemism.

Let’s be perfectly clear: this is an entirely understandable surrender to violence, though disappointingly one that is cloaked in euphemism. While Islam was far down on the list of Charlie Hebdo’s satire targets, Sourisseau told Stern that he wants to prevent people from thinking his magazine “was possessed by Islam.” And it was time to move on, he said, because “we’ve done our job [and] we have defended the right to caricature.”

Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau | EPA

Now the blunt attacks on Islamism — never on Muslims — regularly offered by the magazine’s murdered editor Stéphane Charbonnier have been replaced with the platitudes of its critics. “The mistakes you could blame Islam for can be found in other religions,” Sourisseau told Stern. I suspect he knows that this isn’t exactly true, especially in the era of the Islamic State. After all, the Charlie Hebdo offices weren’t bombed and sprayed with bullets by dyspeptic papists, and neither Riss or Luz have suggested that they’ll no longer draw Jesus. But this is the line we must all take now — even left-wing, French secular humanists — to insulate ourselves from charges of bigotry.

The relentless campaign against Charlie Hebdo by those accusing it of “racism” or “punching down” has had an effect. Because once deployed, as the surviving staff of Charlie Hebdo discovered, the racism charge sticks to the accused’s skin like napalm. And no one is immune — even murdered cartoonists — because there are no penalties for filing a false report. So if they expected unmitigated solidarité after their staff was machine gunned (while planning their participation, it should be noted, in an anti-racism event), they were surely disappointed when non-Francophone writers who hadn’t previously heard of Charlie exploded with denunciations of its racist intent. The most profane mainstream examples compared staffers with raping colonialists and genocidal Nazis.

When the American franchise of PEN, a literary association devoted to the defense of free speech, bestowed an award on Charlie Hebdo celebrating it’s courage, over 200 members revolted, conflating the magazine’s attacks on religious fanatics with attacks on average French Muslims, a group “already marginalized, embattled, and victimized.” (One PEN dissenter, novelist Randa Jarrar, demonstrated her grasp of the subject matter when she referred to “Charlie Hebdo” as a person who had unconvincingly denied “his” racism.)

So the magazine’s criticism of fundamentalism was neutered by both Islamist gunmen and Jello-spined members of the vulgar and stupid “I Am Not Charlie” brigades, who expressed zero interest in the killers’ ideology but an inordinate interest in the ideology of Charlie Hebdo’s editors. The magazine was even defamed by famous cartoonists, including Doonsbury creator Garry Trudeau who blamed the Charlie Hebdo staffers for their own murders, writing that “the decisions they made [to draw Muhammad]…brought a world of pain to France.”

And now that Charlie Hebdo has given up on Muhammad, under threats of continued violence, we are no longer Charlie. Indeed, it’s little surprise that the Sourisseau announcement received depressingly little media attention. In a world of hashtag activism, almost six months after the Je Suis Charlie Facebook profile images have been swapped for rainbow flags, we’ve moved on to moaning about skint Greeks, prepubescent royals making stiff-armed Nazi salutes, and a blustering billionaire pretending to run for president.

The first post-massacre issue edition of Charlie Hebdo featured a Muslim (possibly Muhammad the prophet, possibly an ordinary Muslim named Muhammad) holding a sign that read “Tout est pardonné” — all is forgiven. It was tender and affecting, and a declaration that the remaining staff wouldn’t be cowed by violence. But many newspapers refused then — and still refuse — to run it. As Riss told Stern, “we are expected to exercise a freedom of expression that no one dares to.” In other words, amongst the media classes, Je Suis Charlie was pointless bumper sticker solidarity.

So one can’t begrudge Riss and Luz and all the other survivors at Charlie Hebdo the decision to go soft on those who most demand mockery and derision. But we should begrudge those in media who shrugged at the assassin’s veto, claiming they couldn’t publish satirical cartoons out of respect for religion, for whom Je Suis Charlie was merely social media signaling.

And of course, on the radical fringe, all isn’t forgiven. Just last week French police arrested three French residents planning to behead a military official and post the gruesome results on the Internet. The plot was to be executed on the one-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo killings.

Not long after those killings, former Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val suggested that the magazine was destined to change, to go soft, as a result of the attacks. It provoked the fury of his former colleague. “The terrorists did not win,” Luz insisted, despite his recent decision to retire from drawing Muhammad.

I wish it were true, but with the previous staff of Charlie Hebdo dead, the current crop declaring Muhammad off limits, and the Danish newspaper that started it all also out of the cartoon game, it looks very much like Luz is wrong.

Fixpir

“The mistakes you could blame Islam for can be found in other religions,”

You suspect he thinks this statement isn’t true? It is absolutely true. You’ve conveniently forgotten the whole of the crusades, the burnings during the rise of Protestantism in England that still divide Ireland, the continued tribalistic violence that happens in Palestine, the religious violence that is ongoing across Africa as well as south Asia. Religion is disease. It claims credit for the best of human nature while simultaneously corrupting every aspect of it. Imagine a world without religion–such a victory of reason would effect a deafening peace.

Posted on 7/20/15 | 6:31 PM CET

Marcel

I’ve always wondered why western do-gooders argue that we should not draw cartoons of a 7th century mass murderer, warmonger and slave trader.

Go ahead, deny it. Deny Muhammad had the Qurayza jews massacred, deny he enslaved people, deny he started wars against trade caravans and kept the loot for himself. Deny that he used flimsy pretexts such as ‘they insult me by rejecting me as prophet, I defend myself by killing them and taking their stuff’.

Sure the crusaders were no better. Nor the slave trade which in the middle ages was about 50-50 christian Europeans and islamic Arabs, usually the latter selling to the former.

Posted on 7/20/15 | 9:08 PM CET

rxc

The descent of the west into dhimmitude advances…

Posted on 7/20/15 | 9:56 PM CET

ed

We gave up years ago. The fact that we pointlessly take our shoes off to board an airplane just shows how pathetic and symbolic our complete surrender is.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 6:17 AM CET

Fixpir

This article makes me sad, but unfortunately it is very true.
If ever anybody has difficulties to understand how some French intellectuals slipped into “collaboration” with the nazi invader, you just have to watch French far leftist movement, or the (in)famous PEN revolted members. Stockholm syndrome, added with stupidity and shortsightedness.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 10:27 AM CET

Fixpir

@FrenchSquikSquik
They drew Mohamed.
They drew Mohamed after they were threatened.
They drew Mohamed after they were firebombed.
They maybe drew Mohamed after nine of their own were killed with some unclear statement (“tout est pardonné” – “all’s forgiven”).
And then, one after the other, they stopped.

We shouldn’t blame them, of course, but the bunch of hypocrites blaming them for everything and not supporting them.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 10:31 AM CET

Fixpir

@Eldrich Gaiman
Yeah, religion are the source of all evil in the world, of course, and XXth century did not exist, when the two most damaging ideologies that killed literally 100 million+ people where opposed to religions.

You’re right, as long as we don’t look up at reality, it’s possible to say anything.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 10:35 AM CET

david loos

“Michael Moynihan is a writer in New York.”

that pretty much says it all.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 12:05 PM CET

soulquest7

That is sad! It’s like a world capitulation to a defacto blasphemy law. However, it does make the “courage” award rather ironic. Great article, though. The writer nails it on the head.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 3:07 PM CET

Alan

@Fixpir

The Cold War was one of history’s great religious wars, damn those bloody atheists. The Nazi’s were a product of Christian Europe, Hitler was educated a strict Catholic, one of his favourite read was Martin Luther, you know, they christian guy who called for the wholesale murder of Jews.

Funny old thing reality.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 3:54 PM CET

Fixpir

@Alan
OK, cold war was a religious war. OBVIOUSLY !! How could we not notice !

I’ll help you with your reasoning :Hitler was educated catholic, therefore Nazism is a religious belief.
Stalin was educated as a priest therefore communism was a religious belief.
Mao was not educated as a christian (or, as far as I know, a Buddhist or whatever), therefore he is the exception that confirms the rule.
PolPot was not educated as a Christian, but he went to France for his studies, an obviously Christian country. That MUST be the cause, obviously
Actually, as western Europe was 95% Christians, therefore anything bad from western Europe is obviously the result of religion those last two thousand years.
And as some kind of religious belief always existed, and some kind of evil always existed, there is an “obvious” causation, in the mind of Alan’s likes.

OK, now, so, when we leave fantasy world, we see men and women behaving following their thought. Whether religion improved them or not remains to be elucidated, but certainly not by atheist bigots incapable of accepting reality.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 5:48 PM CET

Fixpir

So, following posts by “Alan” and “Eldrich Gaiman”, I now understand the new American political correctness :Maybe, just maybe, after all, there is a problem with Muslim extremists. Maybe, just maybe, the murders, rape, beheading, intolerance, and minorities oppression with see in all predominantly Muslim countries exist after all. Therefore, obviously, all Jaïns, Buddhist, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Zoroastrians, etc… must be responsible.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 6:03 PM CET

Steve

They surrendered and the death of the editors was in vain …
What a shame!

Posted on 7/21/15 | 6:03 PM CET

Andrew

Thanks.
Given the content of the Koran we are faced now with the terrible choice of becoming more like Islam to fight it or to surrender, the appeasers are winning.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 6:14 PM CET

Ports

What a vile article.
It isn’t about religion it is about right wing people around the world killing each other – and quite often to all your delight leftists – all over the world. Grabbing the spoils. The Islamic fascists – so beloved by the Eu and US when they were killing socialists across Afghanistan and the Middle East- are now fighting the neo-liberals for control over Islamic societies. Mainly killing civilians of course. It’s what right wing people do. You slaughtered civil society all over the globe and now you are all killing each other.

And what about 3.8mn dead Vietnamese, 800,000 Cambodians (Pol Pot only just managed to scrape ahead of the US with 1.3mn dead), 800,000 Laotians (source: UN State Dept 1984) or 1.2mn dead in Iraq by 2007 (source: The Lancet) or 364,000 dead in the US from private weapons between 2001 and 2013.

Of course the terrorists have won, that was decades ago.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 6:21 PM CET

Abe Loxman

Real edgy pissing off Muslims but remember you can go to prison for debating the so-called Holo¢au$t of the jews.

Posted on 7/21/15 | 7:58 PM CET

Jim

This article exhibits an incredible degree of naivety on the part of Mr. Moynihan. In any society where a large number of Moslems live anything like the Hebdo cartoons is simply out of the question. To publlish such material would risk a bloodbath. Even scholarly works on Islam or its history by non-believers are highly dangerous in such a society. Modern Western Culture and Islam are totally incompatible.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 1:19 AM CET

Sergio

Charlie Hebdo first demonstrated their higher evolution by liberty of expression, then demonstrated their higher level of spiritual evolution by forgiveness. Terrorists didn’t win. They demonstrated their low evolution, aggressiveness, stubbornness and fanatical stupidity. Charlie Hebdo has won at the sight of all the wold, demonstrating that the most intelligent and spiritually evolved human is the one that forgives first.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 6:18 AM CET

Vishal

Very disappointing. They must do what they want to do. They are just Expressing and not killing anyone. In India, several movies are made where the muslim actors mock hindu religion and we hindus never go and kill anyone like these muslim extremists do. Charlie Hebdo must do what it wants to do fearlessly.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 10:41 AM CET

Fixpir

@Andrew :
The problem is that, like in 1938 in Munich, the appeasers have only won time. Sure, there WILL be the next demand from Islam, that will request either to stand up or to lie down – well, actually, from Islamists of from Islam ?

Posted on 7/22/15 | 2:18 PM CET

Fixpir

Sergio, you are right, but you are wrong !
You are right in theory. You are obviously wrong in the context. As pointed out by M Moynihan, for everybody, and especially for the terrorists, they have won.

Posted on 7/22/15 | 2:24 PM CET

GodDamnHippies

Alot of people, including Michael Moynihan, seem to not understand this; Hebdo didn`t make any difference. They didn`t do anything. They are a group of hippies in desperate need of a shower and a haircut and they like to doodle. They sit on their asses in an office and make childish drawings. Explain to me, how that helps? They makes noise just to make noise, like 8-year olds. This has very little to do with freedom of speech, making childish drawings becasue you know they will upset people has nothing to do with. They are morons, thats the truth. If they want to fight islam, go to Syria and fight it. Drawings makes no difference at all. So all you people who use this as an example of free speech and bla bla bla, you are morons. You are fighting for the right of a bunch of useless hippies to sit an office and make drawings. Have you thought about this: if no one was insulted by those stupid mohammed cartoons, they would never draw them. Never. They would not make one singel mohammed cartoon. The only reason they do it, is because they know they annoy people. F****** hippies, I just can`t stand them, they sit in an office and make the enemy mad, and then the people who are actually out there, fighting, they have to pay for it. Cowards.